29 April 2013

Seems appropriate to have another one of these posts (here was the initial) since isn't life all about taking the good with the bad?

The good: As mentioned here, we cleaned the house really well earlier last week for impending house guests.
The bad: Impending house guests ended up cancelling on us a day after they were supposed to have arrived, so we busted our butts for nothing.
The good: No visitors to mess up our clean house!

The good: We decided to continue the house improvement kick this weekend and installed some curtain rods and finally bought some curtains (we've just been using blinds).
The bad: We have high ceilings and thus tall windows (not a bad thing technically), so we need super-duper long curtains. Which are not easy to find. We ended up buying some standard-length curtains thinking "how bad could they look?" and ended up with culottes for our windows. So we've got step ladders, tools, rods and such all over the place while we wait for our web-ordered replacements to show up.

The good: Still running on the treadmill everyday.
The bad: No perceptible difference on my body. I'm not expecting miracles, but I'm unconvinced I am really burning 250+ calories from the workouts as the machine says.

The good: Had the best cupcake of my life last week - yellow cake with key lime custard filling and buttercream frosting. Nom!
The bad: It was from a food truck, the name of which I have of course promptly forgotten so I will likely never find this magical confection again.

The good: My pup is the sweetest most obedient little dog in the world.
The bad: Except when we go to the dog park and suddenly she forgets her name and any learned commands, and will only come back to me when she's realized she is way to small to play with that great dane and needs a bench to hide under.

26 April 2013

As much as I enjoy going to places, I hate the act of actually
getting there - road trips aside though, I love a good road trip. I'm
really talking about you, air travel.

I've got a few long
biz trips coming up over the next two months and as much as I should be
appreciative about having a job that allows me to go to new places, I
can't help but to loathe the prospect of having to be squeezed like a
sardine in a long metal tube at 35,000 feet for seemingly endless hours.
Flying for the majority of us nowadays is just not a single bit
comfortable. Especially if you're traveling alone and don't have someone
to commiserate with and happily share armrest space.

I don't think I am a high-maintenance air traveler but I kind of have
a system down to maximum my own personal comfort on these trips - 1)
bottled water so I am not at the mercy of the flight attendant on when I
can get a drink, though honestly I don't hydrate as much as I should on
a plane; 2) get an aisle seat so I don't have to climb over people to
use the lav; 3) scarf for extra warmth, since the planes are often
arctic cold; 4) moisturizer and chap stick - dry lips are the worst;
5) Kindle for reading or playing games; 6) head phones with the soft
squishy ear pieces for comfort and so I can drown everyone around me
out; 7) socks and slip-on shoes for ease; 8) jeans because I have the
impression denim is thicker that most other materials and I want to have
as much between me and that airplane seat as possible; and 9) my own
snacks because honestly airplane food is sometimes just borderline edible. So yeah, I'm usually that lady hauling a computer bag and a big ole tote full of stuff.

24 April 2013

We've got house guests coming over, so the earlier part of this week has
been a bit of a mad scramble to get our house socially acceptable to be
viewed by eyes other than our own. Granted we don't live like little
piggies here but some general cleaning and tidying needed to be done,
plus checking off some items we probably should have done a long while
ago.

Like buying matching lamps for the living room end tables. Cleaning
the covers on the couch. Getting rid of extraneous worn out throw
pillows. Washing the sheets on the guest bed since our last guest
(I know ...) And then since we were in a melee of household activity
anyways, we went ahead and decided to clean out the fridge, organize the
utility room and do all the floors.

So in a way I am
glad for guests since it makes me feel like I need to get the house into
a certain standard (that I should probably be living in anyways!), but
dang, I'm exhausted and our guests aren't even here yet!

I'd like to think of myself as a fairly uncomplicated person. It doesn't take a whole lot to make me happy. I don't need big fancy gestures, loads of money spent or to be lavished with anything (other than attention and maybe the occasional sweet treat). Sometimes I just really enjoy doing nothing under the guise of barely doing anything.

So on seemingly the first perfect weather weekend this spring, a lazy Sunday was spent at the park in my new favorite (almost) shoes, drinking too much fresh-squeezed lemonade, laying about while I got my hair part sun burned and stumbling upon a art festival that also happened to have some pretty spectacular guilty pleasure eats - funnel cake and cupcakes on the same day? Yes, please.

What are some things that you like to do that barely takes any efforts but still totally makes your day?

19 April 2013

I can’t believe we’re more than halfway through April
already, time just seems to be flying by. I feel like this year I am
ill-prepared for the arrival of warmer weather – most of my tees and lighter
clothes are wrinkled masses on the bottoms of my drawers, I am still afraid to
show my toes because I haven’t had a pedi in forever, and I’ve just started to
break out the self-tanner so I can get some color on my legs. Can’t you tell
how bronze and sleek my legs look already, ha.

I kind of miss the days of being a kid when April meant
spring break from school and being taken out to get fresh clothes for the
warmer weather. Back then I would have much rather been outside running the
block with my friends on sunny days than play dress-up, but it felt special to be
able to get new things just for me to wear and to get all this attention
lavished on me by my mom and big sis.

What do you typically do to prep yourself for warmer
weather? What do you enjoy about spring?

15 April 2013

Thanks for all your feedback regarding my post
a few weeks ago about blog design. Unfortunately fate determined that I
will continue to DIY my own layout for a little while longer instead of
paying a professional to do it. Apparently I had forgotten all about
having a car insurance payment coming up this month - and I
completely detonated my phone earlier this week so I had to go slunking
back to the Apple store (and by "detonated," I mean it now lives in a
little baggy to keep all the wee pieces together. Yeah).

So life's not been a bunch of unicorns and fairies lately, but whose life is? So I gleaned an idea from one of IFB's recent posts and I want to give a shout out to all of you lovely ladies who stop by to visit my blog.

Thank YOU.

Thank you for your
endless stylish inspiration, your humor, your openness in sharing your
personal anecdotes. Thank you for taking time from your busy days to
visit here, read my rambles and provide me with your commentary and sound advice. Thank you for
lifting me up when my spirit is down. Thank you for making me know it is
OK for me to like the things that I do - that though fashion and style
blogging may seem a bit frivolous, it doesn't make it any less valid a
hobby and form of expression. Thank you for giving me the confidence to
wear what I want and to put together pieces I would have never
considered before. Thank you for sticking around and staying with me and getting to "know" me, as it were, on this little electronic platform.

10 April 2013

My apologies for my inadvertent mini-blog break, ladies. Believe me, I'd rather have been blogging than dealing with some of my regular life stuff. I know I should feel more grateful in general, but sometimes when the bad outweighs the good and has a tendency to repeat itself, I can't help but to ask myself - why can't All This just be easy for once?

When I'm feeling down, I typically end up doing one of the following to try to put myself into another state of mind-

Eating - well, there really isn't anything that can keep me from eating. I eat when I am happy, I eat when I am sad, though when I need to "turn that frown upside down," my choices veer towards the more deep-fried or refined sugar variety. Doughnuts are my friends. I had a brief stint during college where I had "boy troubles" and literally could not eat the food that was in front of me. This went on for probably two weeks. I look back now and cannot help but to think, "what's a matta wit you?!" College boys versus ramen noodles - sometimes there's no contest. And I don't mean the college boys.

Nothing. Some days are best left to doing just plain ole nothing.

What's a fashion fiend's favorite cheer-me-up hobby? Buying something, of course, the more frivolous, the better. Though I'll typically keep my shopping to solitary online shopping. The last thing I need when I'm not in a good mood is to battle the mall parking lot or feel like I'm getting bombarded too-helpful sales associates. Online shopping alone in the dark, can help take a girl's mind off of things.

I paint my nails. It takes my mind off of things because I need to concentrate - or I just enjoy sniffing polish - and the end result is usually pretty.

And sorry, friends, but for me, a bottle of wine and a good gab still can't compete with the sheer glee of taking my pup to the dog park and watching her run amuck amongst her furry friends. Is there nothing more smile-inducing than to watch a grateful smiling pup bound her way through the fields?

03 April 2013

I sometimes wonder if I
hadn't been born too late because there's something about 1980s pop
culture that totally fascinates me (in reality, I spent most of the '80s
sucking my thumb and learning to count my toes).

I loooooooooved Melanie Griffith in Working Girl,
I groove to the techno-poppy-rock beats of Madonna, Pat Benatar and
Duran Duran on my cable provider's '80s music channel, I still wish
there really is a Sweet Valley, CA. I remember falling asleep to the big
drama of shows like Dynasty, Dallas, Falcon Crest that my mom
watched - nothing like heavy eye makeup and jeweled-tone claws tearing
at each other's big coiffs and chiffon gowns.

I guess I should clarify - I love my idea of the 1980s. I was
really young then and we just moved to the States - everything looks
bigger and better from a child's eyes. And now I "live" through the '80s
thanks to the idealized 1980s world in The Carrie Diaries and recently stumbling upon a treasure trove of teen queen Molly Ringwald movies on Netflix that I can watch any time I want. I can sit back at stare in awe at the big everything-ness of that timeframe - the hair, shoulder pads, heels. Pop, color and possibilities seemed to be everywhere.